Chaos Monkeys: Inside the Silicon Valley Money Machine

Computer engineers use 'chaos monkey' software to wreak havoc and test system robustness. Similarly, tech entrepreneurs like Antonio García Martínez are society's chaos monkeys - their innovations disrupt every aspect of our lives, from transportation (Uber) and holidays (Airbnb) to television (Netflix) and dating (Tinder) - all in search of the perfect business miracle. Describing himself as 'high strung, fast talking, and wired on a combination of caffeine, fear, and greed at all times', García Martínez left Wall Street to make his fortune in Silicon Valley.

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution: 25th Anniversary Edition

Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.

Elon Musk

South African-born Elon Musk is the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. Musk wants to save our planet; he wants to send citizens into space, to form a colony on Mars; he wants to make money while doing these things; and he wants us all to know about it. He is the real-life inspiration for the Iron Man series of films starring Robert Downey, Jr. The personal tale of Musk's life comes with all the trappings one associates with a great, drama-filled story.

Easily Distracted

Steve Coogan was born and raised in Manchester in the 1960s, the fourth of six children. From an early age, he entertained his family with impressions and was often told he should "be on the telly". Failing to get into any of the London-based drama schools, he accepted a place at Manchester Polytechnic School of Theatre and before graduating had been given his first break as a voice artist on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image. The late '80s and early '90s saw Coogan developing characters.

I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59

Comparing Google to an ordinary business is like comparing a rocket to an Edsel. No academic analysis or bystanders account can capture it. Now Doug Edwards, Employee Number 59, offers the first inside view of Google, giving readers a chance to fully experience the bizarre mix of camaraderie and competition at this phenomenal company. I'm Feeling Lucky captures for the first time the unique, self-invented, yet profoundly important culture of the world's most transformative corporation.

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker

Kevin Mitnick was the most elusive computer break-in artist in history. He accessed computers and networks at the world's biggest companies-and however fast the authorities were, Mitnick was faster, sprinting through phone switches, computer systems, and cellular networks. He spent years skipping through cyberspace, always three steps ahead and labeled unstoppable.

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet

Twenty-five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, 20 million people worldwide are surfing the Net. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone. In the 1960s, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices.

Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution

Behind the bitter rivalry between Apple and Google - and how it's reshaping the way we think about technology. The rise of smartphones and tablets has altered the business of making computers. At the center of this change are Apple and Google, two companies whose philosophies, leaders, and commercial acumen have steamrolled the competition. In the age of Android and the iPad, these corporations are locked in a feud that will play out not just in the marketplace but in the courts and on screens around the world.

The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups

Twice a year in the heart of Silicon Valley, a small investment firm called Y Combinator selects an elite group of young entrepreneurs from around the world for three months of intense work and instruction. Their brand-new two- or three-person start-ups are given a seemingly impossible challenge: to turn a raw idea into a viable business, fast. Each YC session culminates in a demo day, when investors and venture capitalists flock to hear pitches from the new graduates. Any one of them might turn out to be the next Dropbox (class of 2007, now valued at $5 billion).

Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World

It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills - and maybe an advanced degree or two. These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These "bots" started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected.

The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It

Behind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process. In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms, and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City.

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes listeners inside Google headquarters - the Googleplex - to explain how Google works.

Follow the Geeks: 10 Digital Innovators and the Future of Work

Follow the Geeks tells the stories of 10 digital entrepreneurs who transformed their careers for the 21st century. See the risks, setbacks, and innovations that defined them. You'll find programmers and photographers, podcasters and philanthropists. No matter what industry you work in, what size your company is, or if you're launching your own startup, these stories provide a trail of wisdom for the future.

Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime - from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door

In Spam Nation, investigative journalist and cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs unmasks the criminal masterminds driving some of the biggest spam and hacker operations targeting Americans and their bank accounts. Tracing the rise, fall, and alarming resurrection of the digital mafia behind the two largest spam pharmacies - and countless viruses, phishing, and spyware attacks - he delivers the first definitive narrative of the global spam problem and its threat to consumers everywhere.

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Capture Your Data and Control Your World

In Data and Goliath, Schneier reveals the full extent of surveillance, censorship, and propaganda in society today, examining the risks of cybercrime, cyberterrorism, and cyberwar. He shares technological, legal, and social solutions that can help shape a more equal, private, and secure world. This is an audiobook to which everyone with an Internet connection - or bank account or smart device or car, for that matter - needs to listen.

Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software

Their story takes us through a maze of dead ends and exhilarating breakthroughs as they and their colleagues wrestle not only with the abstraction of code but with the unpredictability of human behavior, especially their own. Along the way, we encounter black holes, turtles, snakes, dragons, axe-sharpening, and yak-shaving - and take a guided tour through the theories and methods, both brilliant and misguided, that litter the history of software development, from the famous "mythical man-month" to Extreme Programming.

Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon

Top cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter tells the story behind the virus that sabotaged Iran's nuclear efforts and shows how its existence has ushered in a new age of warfare - one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb.

The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook

The Accidental Billionaires is the inspiration behind the Oscar winning film, The Social Network, dramatising Zuckerberg's success and proving you don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies... Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg - an awkward maths prodigy and a painfully shy computer genius - were never going to fit in at elite, polished Harvard. Yet that all changed when master-hacker Mark crashed the university's entire computer system by creating a rateable database of female students.

American Desperado: My Life as a Cocaine Cowboy

American Desperado is possibly the most jaw-dropping, event-filled, adrenaline-soaked criminal autobiography ever written. Like a real-life Scarface Jon was born into the upper levels of the Gambino crime family and witnessed his first murder at age seven. He became a one-man juvenile crime wave before joining an assassination squad in Vietnam.

Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business

Conventional wisdom says most startups need to be in Silicon Valley, started by young engineers around a sexy new idea and backed by VC funding. But as Mikkel Svane reveals in Startupland, the story of founding Zendesk was anything but conventional. Founded in a Copenhagen loft by three 30-something friends looking to break free from corporate doldrums, Zendesk Inc. is now one of the hottest enterprise software companies, still rapidly growing with customers in 150 countries.

The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World

In little more than half a decade, Facebook has gone from a dorm-room novelty to a company with 500 million users. It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life not only of teenagers but hundreds of millions of adults worldwide. As Facebook spreads around the globe, it creates surprising effects, even becoming instrumental in political protests from Colombia to Iran.

Digital Wars: Apple, Google, Microsoft, and the Battle for the Internet

Digital Wars starts in 1998, when the Internet and computing business was about to be upended - by an antitrust case, a tiny start-up and a former giant rebuilding it. Charles Arthur here examines the differing strategies of the three best-known tech companies in their battle to win control of the exploding network connecting the world. Microsoft was a giant - soon to become the highest-valued company in the world - while Apple was a minnow and Google just a start-up. By February 2012, Apple was worth more than both Microsoft and Google combined.

Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus 'Notch' Persson and the Game that Changed Everything

Three years ago, 32-year-old Markus "Notch" Persson of Stockholm was an unknown and bored computer programmer. Today, he is a multi-millionaire international icon. Minecraft, the "virtual Lego" game Markus crafted in his free time, has become one of the most talked about activities since Tetris. Talked about by tens of millions of people, in fact.It is the story of unlikely success, fast money, and the power of digital technology to rattle an empire. And it is about creation, exclusion, and the feeling of not fitting in.

The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America

In The Shadow Factory, James Bamford, the foremost expert on National Security Agency, charts its transformation since 9/11, as the legendary code breakers turned their ears away from outside enemies, such as the Soviet Union, and inward to enemies whose communications increasingly crisscross America.

Publisher's Summary

The definitive inside account of the file-sharing revolution that overthrew the music industry, All the Rave reveals the family betrayal, greed, and mismanagement that hijacked one the most fundamental innovations of the Internet era.

Named one of the three best books of 2003 by Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., All the Rave has been out of print until now and unavailable in most electronic formats.

Author and veteran technology journalist Joseph Menn also wrote 2010's Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords who are Bringing Down the Internet.

As an added bonus, this audiobook includes a special interview with the author, conducted by Susie Bright.

What the Critics Say

"The book, by Joseph Menn, provides a well-documented history of one of the most celebrated collapses of the Internet. But it goes far deeper, giving an inside account of the creation of Napster, the battle for its control and the maneuvering by big Silicon Valley names to try to turn music piracy into gold." (The New York Times)

"That rare business book that nicely avoids either hatchet job or hagiography." (San Francisco Chronicle)

"An admirable piece of reporting, of interest to both friends and foes of the movement Napster helped to create." (The Washington Post)

Shawn Fanning and Napster overthrew the music industry—and if you don't think you're still reeling from that revolution, sit down and prepare to have your mind blown.

Fanning never went away. His legend in IT and the transformation of intellectual property on the Internet is something we take for granted now— but its origins are something out of a down and dirty mystery novel.

This is Joseph Menn's meticulous investigation of how Shawn unearthed the firmament— the eye-opening reveals are incredible. The tale of Fanning's shady uncle pushes the story into a true-crime investigation.

Take a listen!

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Tim

United States

16/03/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"Digital Ponzi Scheme"

After reading about Napster and Shawn Fanning, the company seem like a digital Ponzi scheme. I'm a child from the Napster era and "All the Rave" was a decent read, but the actual company and leadership was a big joke. Terrible management.

I don't feel bad for Shawn Fanning. He might had been a good coder, but no leadership and you never do business with family. John Fanning, his uncle, was the reason for Napster failures. Maybe if Shawn's uncle wasn't apart of the company, Napster would still be here.

They pretty much destroy themselves. The company just sounded shady from the start.

Even after the death of Napster, any savvy user could easily find these files elsewhere.

Thank you Napster for bringing the technology of "sharing" to the Internet.

1 of 2 people found this review helpful

Eliza C von Baeyer

11/04/13

Overall

Performance

Story

"Could have been such an interesting story"

What disappointed you about All the Rave?

I found the story was not put together in a way that was engaging or very interesting. The potential for a great telling of the story of Napster. This was boring.

What was most disappointing about Joseph Menn’s story?

The narrator's delivery and weak writing.

Would you be willing to try another one of John Rubinstein’s performances?

I would have to hear a sample first to make sure this book's failure was just the bad writing and storytelling.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment. Was excited to learn more than was in the newspaper about the rise and fall of Napster.

0 of 1 people found this review helpful

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